Wearing masks is an easy way to operate and popular measure for preventing epidemics.Although masks can slow down the spread of viruses,their effi-cacy in gathering environments involving heterogeneous person-to-person contacts remains unknown.Therefore,we aim to investigate the epidemic prevention effect of masks in different real-life gathering environments.This study uses four real interpersonal contact datasets to construct four empirical networks to represent four gathering environments.The transmission of COVID-19 is simulated using the Monte Carlo simulation method.The heterogeneity of individuals can cause mask efficacy in a specific gathering environment to be different from the baseline efficacy in general society.Furthermore,the heterogeneity of gathering environments causes the epidemic prevention effect of masks to differ.Wearing masks can greatly reduce the probability of clustered epidemics and the infection scale in primary schools,high schools,and hospitals.However,the use of masks alone in primary schools and hospitals cannot control outbreaks.In high schools with social distancing between classes and in workplaces where the interpersonal contact is relatively sparse,masks can meet the need for prevention.Given the heterogeneity of individual behavior,if individuals who are more active in terms of interpersonal contact are prioritized for mask-wearing,the epidemic prevention effect of masks can be improved.Finally,asymptomatic infection has varying effects on the prevention effect of masks in different environments.The effect can be weakened or eliminated by increasing the usage rate of masks in high schools and workplaces.However,the effect on primary schools and hospitals cannot be weakened.This study contributes to the accurate evaluation of mask efficacy in various gathering environments to provide scientific guidance for epidemic prevention.

Haochen SUN;Xiaofan LIU;Zhanwei DU;Ye WU;Haifeng ZHANG;Xiaoke XU

College of Information and Communication Engineering,Dalian Minzu University,Dalian 116600,China;Web Mining Laboratory,Department of Media and Communication,City University of Hong Kong,Hong Kong,China;WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control,School of Public Health,Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine,The University of Hong Kong,Hong Kong,China;Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health,Hong Kong Science and Technology Park,Hong Kong,China;Computational Communication Research Center, Beijing Normal University (Zhuhai), Zhuhai 519087, China;School of Journalism and Communication, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China;Key Laboratory of Intelligent Computing and Signal Processing of Ministry of Education,School of Mathematical Science,Anhui University,Hefei 230601,China

工程管理前沿（英文版）

[1]Haochen SUN;Xiaofan LIU;Zhanwei DU;Ye WU;Haifeng ZHANG;Xiaoke XU-.Heterogeneous influence of individuals'behavior on mask efficacy in gathering environments)[J].工程管理前沿（英文版）,2022(04):550-562

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